Like a peaceful scene from a Star Wars movie, the European Southern Observatory's La Silla telescopes sit blanketed in fresh snow as the Sun sets over the Atacama desert. Hang on. Snow? Desert? How does that work? Read more >

The European Southern Observatory's new exoplanet-hunting telescopes on Cerro Paranal in northern Chile look absolutely stunning in this long-exposure night-time shot. It shows the Next-Generation Transit Survey (NGTS) space-gazers during testing.

How do you create the world's largest virtual optical telescope and the most advanced visible-light astronomical observatory? Teamwork. The Very Large Telescope at the Paranal Observatory combines the visual prowess of four huge telescopes — for the first time ever — to mimic a 130-metre-wide mirror.

A new infrared image of the Helix Nebula captured by the European Southern Observatory in Chile looks even more like God’s eye looking down on us. It’s almost creepy in its wondrously beautiful haze of red, orange and yellow.